After an extended summer’s worth of half-length Roundups necessitated by a virtual dearth of releases, this month has swung straight to the opposite end of the pendulum, with more stuff to cover than readers have seen since quite early in the year.

Even to the moment I’m writing these very words, new releases are positively pouring in from one label or individual band contact after another, leading to further and further revisions and extensions to this rather spooky seasonal roundup. As it is, I already have a fair sized batch of releases earmarked for the November iteration thereof…

So rather than getting into the eerie and unearthly uncanniness of this spectral season of Samhain, what say we get into the spirit of things, putting the old behind us and forging forward into the new?

“But the ritual also required a magickal building. It needed to be secluded and to face Northward, with windows facing in all directions for me to watch for evil spirits. I also required a terrace covered in fine sand, at the end of which should be a lodge where evil spirits could gather. Oh, and a croquet lawn.”
“For the evil spirits to play croquet?”
“Exactly. Keep ’em busy!”

“Why have you got a horse in your office!?!”
“I couldn’t find anywhere else to put the bally thing…apparently the service doesn’t own any stables. Bit of an oversight, if you ask me…”

In honor of the season, this eerie month of October, the sinister shades of Samhain and the fine fellows over at Bafflegab Productions have joined forces to provide us with some retroactive reviewables we’d managed to miss out on in the ongoing adventures of the men of MI-13, the Scarifyers.

“I admit I was never a big one for The Bard, but I don’t remember his stuff being like this, do you? It doesn’t scan, it doesn’t rhyme, it’s crap!”

While not quite up there on the level of Jago & Litefoot or its wholly unrelated in genre upstart competition Pathfinder Legends, one of my very favorite Big Finish lines* has always been The Scarifyers.

Next on the menu, we have a trio of adult oriented ephemera from famed cult director Ray Dennis Steckler. And while that doesn’t mean Cash Flagg, Carolyn Brandt or Arch Hall, Jr. this time around, you still know what that’s saying.